A Última Vez Que Vi Macau

Halfway into the film the narrator comments how, after 400 years of Portuguese rule, there was no one able to speak Portuguese in Macau. Yet weirdly, the crux to his comment seemed to be embedded within his narration and direction itself. Not only were the depictions of local life in Macau highly stereotypical, but any native speaker of the Cantonese language would cringe at how unnatural the dialogues are. They are not just inaccurate, they are what you get when you throw English phrases into Google translate and run it through 2 translations and pronouncing them verbatim.

On a less technical note, I found the audio-visual choices to be awkward. At times, what appeared to be the narrator's personal monologue was paired with shots where the unseen protagonist would not have been able to witness. Part of this might come down to the directors' plans to flirt with the noir genre, but in effect this throws the intimacy of the monologue in doubt, as the audience simply cannot decide whether to take the film as a personal monologue or a thriller seen from a divine perspective. As a result, even the narrator's recounting of his childhood days and old family photos turned out to be emotionless and flat. One can't help but wonder how, having spent so much time in Macau, the director still fell pray to such noticeable cultural stereotyping and linguistic negligence.